The relative proportions of

-helix,

-sheet, and unordered form in

-lactoglobulin A and B were examined in solutions of urea, guanidine, and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). In the curve-fitting method of circular dichroism (CD) spectra, the reference spectra of the corresponding structures determined by Chen et al. (1974) were modified essentially according to the secondary structure of

-lactoglobulin B predicted by Creamer et al. (1983), i.e., that the protein has 17%

-helix and 41%

-sheet. The two variants showed no appreciable difference in structural changes. The reduction of disulfide bridges in the proteins increased

-sheet up to 48% but did not affect the

-helical proportion. The

-helical proportions of nonreduced

-lactoglobulin A and B were not affected below 2 M guanidine or below 3 M urea, but those of the reduced proteins began to decrease in much lower concentrations of these denaturants. By contrast, the

-helical proportions of the nonreduced and reduced proteins increased to 40–44% in SDS. The

-sheet proportions of both nonreduced and reduced proteins, which remained unaffected even in 6 M guanidine and 9 M urea, decreased to 24–25% in SDS.
Key words
-lactoglobulin A -
-lactoglobulin B - secondary structure - CD - SDS